Core Questions.
• How and to what extent will AI influence the evolution of human culture and virtue?
• How can AI assist humans in the acquisition of virtue?
• Is AI itself capable of virtue? And if so, are those virtues shared with or distinct from human virtues? How can we build virtuous AI?
Why is it needed? Our project is needed to bring together AI scientists and scholars from diverse cultures, religions and philosophies to learn to conceptualize AI technology interacting with culture and virtue.
What Big Questions will it help to answer? This project relates to “Science & the Big Questions” via Natural Sciences and thus to Cultural Evolution by exploring how AI could affect human culture and virtue. It points to “cultural possibilities for common human flourishing in response to contemporary global issues.”
Activities to answer those questions? We will hold three online public research conferences in 2023 and hosted in Berkeley, Seoul, and Rome to allow for Eastern and Western participation. We will select the best papers and ask authors to expand them for entry in three edited volumes. We will work with the GTU’s new program GTUx to create audio files, videos and online materials to share their insights with a wider of audience of academics, tech leaders and the general public.
Concrete deliverables by the end of the project? Virtuous Artificial Intelligence?, a three volume publication organized around the three core questions of our project. Two new courses at the GTU. Audio, video and textual materials, drawing from the conferences for the CTNS and GTUx websites.
The likely impact? VAI will expand the perspective of scholars about the implications of AI for society and culture, how AI contributes to human moral enhancement, and how AI could develop virtue. We aim to expand the conversation using material from the project to the GTU community, Bay Area tech companies, and panels at the ISSR and AAR.
